Focus on Administrative Attitudes: Carnegie Mellon Contrasted With Washington Univ. in St. Louis

I received a comment from someone who taught at Carnegie in the 90’s.  I will compare it – only with respect to administrative attitudes –  to my experience at Washington Univ. in St. Louis.  I believe that, though both of these observations are somewhat anecdotal, there is enough substance (and observation) in both cases to illuminate these serious and important issues.

Here is how the commentor from Carnegie described her experience with parents and students:

“…we stood solidly against grade inflation. The main source of pressure for grade inflation appeared to be parents, both indirectly and, I regret to say, occasionally directly. As a mere Instructor, I had nothing to lose from sending an interfering parent packing, and in fact I did so more than once…

…I was fortunate to have taught in a place that not only supported this approach, but insisted on it.”

(The comment goes on to eloquently explain this instructor’s insightful views.  I recommend reading her complete comment posted at How to Get a Job at Google )

If you have read A Tale Out of School, then you already know how Washington Univ. handles complaints.  In any case, here is an excerpt from that story that demonstrates a somewhat different view of how to handle student and parent complaints.  (Obviously, I mean the view of Wash. U.’s administration.)

EXCERPT

Here is a letter that was sent to the Dean of Arts and Sciences and the Dean of Engineering. Such a letter would be taken very seriously.  [The Chair of the Math Department descibed of as part of what he was having to “deal with”]

“Dear Dean Mackey[Dean of Arts and Sciences] and Dean … [Dean of Engineering]:

I am writing …concerning this semester’s offering of Differential Equations, …, in which my son…, is currently enrolled.

…I was a member of the faculty at [different famous engineering school] for several years, …

…, my son and I have discussed the way in which Differential Equations is being taught and graded…my impression is that the instructor is not doing a very effective job of communicating essential concepts…

…, I am troubled even more by the information I have been given about the instructor’s grading policy. An exam was administered in the past week, and I have been told that the average class grade was 47 out of 100. [It was 68. Apparently, what the father “was told” was in error. The average for my other three tests was in the mid 70’s.] … a class average below 50% indicates a problem with the exam…the instructor [does] not curve… I have never heard of such a grading structure. In the courses I taught, my goal was for class averages…to be in the range of 60-70%, and class average was around a C+ or a B-.

… I am also writing this letter as a “customer.” I pay the tuition bills…

I encourage you to look into these issues and to determine if my concerns are merited. “

I don’t know if anyone ever looked into the matter, as the parent asked. No one talked to me. On the other hand, the following email from the parent’s son indicates to me that the administration may have written the parent back, asking him to ask his son if I had “improved”.

Dr. [Chair of the Math Dept.],

… my father … decided … to send an email to Dean Do of the engineering school…[My father] decided… to let me know of his actions after he received a response requesting feedback from the students.

…I decided I would wait about one week …to allow any changes to take place… Unfortunately, I believe Professor Feldman has made very little improvement…

… it is my understanding that his teaching methods were too theoretical. …. My suggestion would be to introduce a topic, and do basic, and progressively more difficult examples of the types of problems we would run into on an exam …Almost all of the homework sets assigned are the set posted to the [MIT] website, they are very dissimilar to the questions we see on exams. [Actually, they are exactly the same in many cases. Why is this student not aware that he is seeing his assigned homework problems on the test?]

…I currently have a ‘D’ in the course … I feel…that this grade does not reflect my understanding of the course, nor does it the time that I have spent working on it. …I am hoping this will be of some use to you as you continue to try and improve this course.”

I find the student’s final comment intriguing. Apparently, he and his father think that the administration is trying to “improve the course”. Have things gotten so out of whack that in a reputedly outstanding school, administrators can “try and improve” a course in response to a student and father, when the father seems to be totally misled, and the student apparently wants to do well without even reading the homework?

END OF EXCERPT

I think there is a big difference in the future prospects between students who go to schools where learning is first, and those that go to schools were catering trumps learning.  As just a small piece of evidence, look at Comp Sci Grads Getting Jobs at Google .  You will see that schools like Dartmouth (with a small but selective 3-2 engineering program) do better than schools with non-selective 3-2 programs like Columbia and Washington U..  (See the “Engineering 3-2 Programs” Category on the right for more.)